just called Hackney Council...

[Glow worm]

About a year ago the Parish Council here decided to turn all street lights (except those on some of the main roads) off between midnight and 5am. After much protesting from the locals we now have about 1/4 of the street lights left on between those hours.

I would Love them to switch streetlights off hereabouts- or better still get rid of them altogether. It's a rural area but you'd never know it at night as all the villages hereabouts are lit up like Las Vegas. Just seems crazy and just pi$$es millions of £'s in lecky bills down the drain year on year. Total madness. Luckily there's none near my house but I really feel for the poor sods with a light right outside their bedroom window. I'd get an air rifle tbh!

 

[Black Sheep]

I have a tiled kitchen floor and I always leave an Ikea fold-up wooden chair propped up inside my kitchen door. If a burglar came in by that door, the falling chair would make a loud noise as it hit the tiles, which would hopefully scare them off. If not, then it would at least alert me to their presence at which point I would leap out of bed and thud down the stairs one tread at a time and hitting each one with a metal bar I kept from an old sofa bed, and shouting in a very deep voice "Intruder - LEAVE NOW!!!" I think they would get the message ...

no, its more the piles of waste building materials from bits of building that have been taken off due to being crap and not even good enough to build a greenhouse out of.

 

[Brains]

I don't want to be too much of a dull dork, but you're confessing to electoral fraud, which as a former presiding officer I know is punishable by some surprisingly long prison sentences.

Out of interest was there also an offence where the local council sends more voting cards to an address than people can possibly live there, and also does not remove names from the list despite there being no mention of those names in at least two updates.

From memory (this was quite a few years back) I think we got something like 15 voting cards for a two bedroom house and some of the names would have left at least two general elections earlier.

on the assumption the council did this for the entire borough I would assume that the number of voting cards issued would have been in the order of twice the population.

(by the way, it's not a marginal, so the outcome would not have made any difference)

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Out of interest was there also an offence where the local council sends more voting cards to an address than people can possibly live there, and also does not remove names from the list despite there being no mention of those names in at least two updates.

From memory (this was quite a few years back) I think we got something like 15 voting cards for a two bedroom house and some of the names would have left at least two general elections earlier.

on the assumption the council did this for the entire borough I would assume that the number of voting cards issued would have been in the order of twice the population.

(by the way, it's not a marginal, so the outcome would not have made any difference)

I haven't run polling stations for many years, but I do remember that you don't need a poling card to vote, and as long as the register of electors is filled in correctly by your household, and you don't present yourself as being someone whom you are not them you're doing fine in the eyes of the law. If you present yourself at a polling station (regardless of what card you are carrying) and when asked if you are the person you claim to be answer with a lie then you are committing electoral fraud, and I doubt the administrative errors of your local council would be seen as mitigating circumstances by any judge.

Part of the reason I quit trying to be a part of the electoral / democratic process is that I got fed up with smart arse candidates, agents and difficult members of the public.

As with all things in life you should do what you see as fitting, but sometimes your opinion and the black and white of the law may differ.

This is nothing personal btw.

...and don't get me started on the illusion that most people have with regards to thinking English elections are secret ballots; they are not.

 

[subaqua]

I haven't run polling stations for many years, but I do remember that you don't need a poling card to vote, and as long as the register of electors is filled in correctly by your household, and you don't present yourself as being someone whom you are not them you're doing fine in the eyes of the law. If you present yourself at a polling station (regardless of what card you are carrying) and when asked if you are the person you claim to be answer with a lie then you are committing electoral fraud, and I doubt the administrative errors of your local council would be seen as mitigating circumstances by any judge.

Part of the reason I quit trying to be a part of the electoral / democratic process is that I got fed up with smart arse candidates, agents and difficult members of the public.

As with all things in life you should do what you see as fitting, but sometimes your opinion and the black and white of the law may differ.

This is nothing personal btw.

...and don't get me started on the illusion that most people have with regards to thinking English elections are secret ballots; they are not. [/quote]

and don't the presiding officers get arsey when asked why there is a traceable number recorded against my name

 

[Andrew_Culture]

I'd like to say I never got arsey, and I can because it's true!